I stare at the word document like a kid with a 5-page essay due tomorrow. Blank. I was blank. Like my creativity was borne into my dreams and not onto the page. Just before sleep your brain is at its most creative but always you’re too tired or forget to write it down.
In high spirits, Jaimie’s in the bedroom trying on clothes in the mirror and making kissy faces. Manolo Blahnik shoes, Louboutin’s, Christian Dior jackets, and Calvin Klein underwear. Gucci bags and Kay jeweler diamonds. Boxes piled to the ceiling make it difficult to move around but he manages. Cadillac Escalade in the driveway. All the materials for a kitchen remodel clutter up the backyard, though I’ve seen him on Zillow looking at homes in Wellesley. If you don’t know, that’s a wealthy part of Massachusetts. I try to picture myself in a million-dollar home. All that comes to me is how it would look on fire.
Jude law comes to our doorstep in a fake mustache peering into our fisheye lens and knocking. In his hands is a leash but no dog. In a charmingly befuddled British accent says into the speaker, “hello? Is anyone there? Hello? I’ve lost my dog.”
Tom texts: Tell Jude I know about Esmerelda and the yacht. Lol.
I text: next time you’re over don’t kiss me so much. I think Jaimie is starting to suspect something.
Tom: Good.
Me: Not good. I’m feeling like we’re in a house of cards here.
Tom: There’s nothing we can’t accomplish now, love. Just give him half the money and you and I can fulfill that cabin dream of yours.
Popping his head into the room like a kid who’d found his mother in a department store Jaimie shows me his hands. I turn my phone over. His hands are bejeweled with a ring on every finger. I nod and smile greasily from ear to ear. On his head is a movie prop expensive toupee that matches his sideburns. The kind that has to be glued on. Disconcerting to my eyes, it’s out of place. No fooling me.
Looking at the security monitor Jaimie laughs, says, “who needs Hollywood anymore?”
“Not us,” I say, high five him, give him a kiss, and he puts a loaded capped syringe on the desk, and leaves the room whistling.
On his way out he says, “they’ll be here soon. Best get ready.”
We had four hours.
I text: Sometimes he’s so gay I just want to shove him down a flight of stairs.
Tom texts: Do it.
Then he texts: JK
I’m not a flowery gay man. When I can help it, I’m not emotional, outspoken, flossy, or well dressed, or anything. That’s not internalized homophobia either. My problem with people assuming those things about us that y’all think because of our gayness we’re weak. Don’t lie. You really do believe that. Seriously, you think we’re all a bunch of girls with penises. As always with scissors in hand ready to fix your bangs. It’s like you think we can’t defend ourselves or whatever. Some of ya’ll’ve never seen two drag queens fight over who’s eyebrows are more crooked, and it shows. Not proud that I’m not flowery; it’s just a trait I don’t have. I love my flowery husband. I mean, I suck his dick all the time.
Well used to, anyways.
Tom texts: You, okay? You need someone to talk to?
In the fisheye, Jude Law wanders away from the doorstep the leash dragging behind him like a toddler with a blanket. From behind, he didn’t look that great.
I want so badly to see Tom’s apartment. Little but cute and perfect, I’ve only seen snippets of it from the photos he sends. Looking past his beautiful nudes, there’s awards and movie posters arranged everywhere. Stuff I want to touch but couldn’t like in a museum. I didn’t want his life, I wanted him to be my life.
Taking down my notebook and pen, on a page littered with names like Beyonce, Elton John, Buzz Aldrin, and Larry the Cable Guy, I jot down “Jude Law,” and the time and date.
Tom texts: Where’d you go?
Gyms are closed for the next three weeks until The Immolation blows over. Though I could afford plastic surgery, and muscle implants, I open safari and look at NordicTrack treadmills to keep my skin taut. Olympic weight sets to make my muscles bigger. How to build a home steam room to relax in after workouts and for our actors to simmer off any unsightly swelling. Electrolysis for the hair on my taint, and where I could get my butthole bleached because a brown butthole is the hallmark of an amateur pornographer. We’ve bought cock rings, dragon dildos, costumes, leather bindings, drop cloths, diffuse lighting, 8K cameras, and Macintosh computers with Adobe Photoshop to polish out blemishes and scars. Soon we’d need to hire staff just to keep things going.
Being wanted is a lot of work.
Switched tabs. On the screen are The Pup Play Twinks, who are supposed to sneak over and do the couch interview and screen-test. Both pale, smooth, skinny, in their mid-twenties, with long waggling cocks, they currently hold a number 6 spot beneath me and want to collaborate. This isn’t PewDiePie playing games with Markiplier and Jack Septiceye. I’m going to fuck them in Jaimie and I’s bed. Where Tom I’ve laid and made hundreds of millions of likes and views. Where I’m going to come in dressed in my robes and YokeStone and find the two altar boys kissing and because I was a lifelong innocent virgin, so tempting, so alluring, they’re gonna show me the way.
Writing a porn script isn’t a lot of work.
Tom texted: I love you.
Approaching the fisheye lens is a teenage boy with sad eyes behind buddy holly glasses. In the boy’s hands is a box of Hebert’s Candy Bars for a fund raiser. Poking out of the box is a wad of cash. If not for the $100 bill in the corner, I’d’ve been fooled.
“Jaimie?” I call down the hall.
Floating in, he inspects the monitor, smiles, says, “glad you caught that one. It’s Jacob Tremblay.” I look at Jaimie curiously. He says, “the actor from “Room.””
I nod and ignore his petulant knocks and rings. While we still don’t believe in magic or any of that nonsense, Jaimie and I don’t want to ruin a good thing. Superstitious as it is, since Jenifer Lawrence I’ve turned away every movie star, athlete, musician, politician, author, and even PhD candidates and Nobel Laureates. Even we turned away Greta Thunberg the young environmentalist.
We aren’t going out or even shopping. Pay someone else to do it. Therefore, if I don’t go out, no chance meetings. But these stars, these already made it, well to do citizens, not caring if there’s a mandated lockdown, not caring they might be burned up, they’re compelled to come to the door and knock.
After I buy the treadmill and weight set, I close the browser and all other windows except for Word and typed,
“The most popular way of people to commit suicide is by living until they die.”
Reading and rereading it several times, I promptly delete all of it. It’s garbage anyway.
“Hey, babe?”
I jump out of my skin and turned to find Jaimie standing behind me with a cup of coffee.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just,” he paused, said, “I’ve never seen you write about dying before.”
I say, “you won’t see it again either. Don’t know why I typed it.”
“Is it because you miss the nursing home? You feeling guilty?”
Guilt’s the perfect word. Tom. The dreams that were so obviously real events. Not answering Louise and changing my number. Not looking to see if any of my old folks died. I’d abandoned them after Betty. That night after an argument with Shelly over the pills, falls, and fire extinguisher, I told her to go fuck herself with a rake, and she sent me home on threat she’d call the police. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, my absentmindedness in putting Betty out with the fire extinguisher showed how useless I was in an emergency. Could have been it was an excuse to pursue my dreams of independence. Could have just been that I was avoiding The Immolation, but that’s not entirely true. Truth was, I’d hurt a person I cared about. Truth was, it was my fault, Betty being immolated. I don’t know how but it was. And consequently, I don’t want anyone else going all crispy or put out with fire extinguishers. Especially Louise.
“No,” I say to Jaimie, then, “I was writing about a time when I was suicidal. Back at the monastery.”
Jaimie nods, but behind his expression is disbelief. I knew because of the way he licks his lips in thought.
Shitty as Louise’s insurance is, I’d paid her hospital bills. Just called and paid without asking how she was. In the end, before Nancy took her back to the home, the bill was $150,000.
Tom texts: I’ll bet Jamie is badgering you right now.
Gwyneth Paltrow comes to the door dressed as a homeless person. Her hair in tatters, with an orange crate full of candles, soaps, perfumes, lipsticks, eyeshadows, and toothbrushes as if to sell them. Probably she’d been method acting, living in a dumpster for a week just to get that look. Perfect as it was, the dirt, the grime, the soot under her nails, and even the bags under her eyes, I know it’s her.
“Hello?” Gwyneth called, and rang the bell, then, “I’m selling candles and I’m so terribly hungry.”
Jaimie and I giggle.
Watching Gwyneth, Jaimie says, “anything you want to talk about?”
“No,” I say, and he leans down for another kiss, and I give him one.
Minimizing Word, I open safari and look for Betty’s obituary. It was long, like the Unabomber’s manifesto taken out in the New York Times long. Detailed every moment of her eventful life from the moment she’d been born in Berlin. Mr. Drunsk died a week later in his sleep, it reads, but I know what really happened. A broken heart. Like how I hope I’d die if Jaimie died, or we split up. Already, he’s on the phone with someone.
“Oh yes, you should probably prep. Wouldn’t want an accident,” he says.
The dirty actress on the stoop wanes, hangs her head, and walks away.
Tom texts: give Gwyneth my hate. All of it. lol
I jot down in the notebook, Jacob Tremblay, and Gwyneth Paltrow.